Most of the reviews I’ve seen have outlined Coates’s remarkable story. But what strikes me most is his voice. I have about as little exposure to the language of black America as is possible for an American. At points in the book, the unfamiliar slang knots up beyond my guessing. And obviously I have no way to know how close it is to the world he’s remembering, West Baltimore in the 1980s and onward. Yet throughout I hear Coates’s ownership of this voice — his fusion of diverse vocabularies, registers, traditions into a personal creole, faithful to all its origins in pandering to none. A passage of direct narration (116-7):

Plus I was not alone. We would start off only five or six deep, trooping down Tioga, down Gwynne Falls, and then up the grass hill. But all of us had boys from other districts, and as we traveled you would see a homeboy from summer camp or elementary, whose clique would be assimilated, and in this way we would expand until, atop Dukeland hill, dap was exchanged, and we were many deep. We’d front at the top of the concrete steps, talking shit, cultivating rage until we were ice grilled, until our movements were warning flares and bared teeth.

Then I was alone again, because initially none of my crew was gifted and talented. I soloed into the next level of the Marshall Team — 8-16, fewer boys this time, and that meant trouble. Our army was smaller now and could not tolerate pacifists. I remembered who I’d been just a year earlier, spaced out and ready to run, and wanted no part of it. I thought of walking in, smacking the first fool I saw, and taking a suspension like a badge. But that was just the voice of my intelligent armor. I was still a dreamer, if now repressed, was still cupcakes and comic books at the core.

Take a minor precise detail: “gifted and talented” — the grammatical incongruity tells us the phrase is in quotes, from the bureaucratese of school. Or the chiming of “dap” and “deep”, both used repeatedly elsewhere.

The closest analogy in my own reading (an idiosyncratic association, implausible as influence) is Iain Sinclair’s nonfiction, say Lights Out for the Territory. But enough about me — go read.

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14 comments

Odd historical note: when I was in elementary and middle school, it was called “gifted and talented,” GAT for short. Then came gangsta rap, with all its talk of gats, and suddenly I found myself “talented and gifted,” TAG for short. Odd—telling?—that it was GAT in West Bal’more in the 80s.

“dap was exchanged, and we were many deep” has the rhythm of the speech of the out-of-work saxophonist in Markson’s Epitaph for a Dead Beat.

I feel so dumb when I read this blog. That’s why I come here. So I can read what smart people write and I can ignore, for a little while, that some people think creationism, or a McCain presidency, or libertarianism, or Radiohead makes sense.

If Jason does, he’s not alone. I always feel like they’re not as interesting as they ought to be. In particular, the way they play their instruments and sing (is it only Yorke that sings?) strikes me as dull.
Jason, I sincerely hope you’re not serious. That sounds masochistic.
Ben, are you speaking strictly of the rhythm (a blank-verse line embedded in the prose)? Or thinking of the droll donnish inversion “dap was exchanged”?

No — it’s a question of touch, swing, etc. You know that if you ask two players to strum the same E chord on the same guitar, the results will not be the same. In the Radiohead I’ve heard (by no means the corpus entire) it’s as if someone had written out the score of a potentially interesting song, and then some other guys had executed it in a bland, homogenized manner.

1. I hate falsetto singing. Purely a matter of personal taste, but the high warbly voice of Thom Yorke makes me want to jam a pencil into my eardrums.

2. The band doesn’t even sound interested in their own songs. Just flat out boring, and they sound as bored with it as I am. I’ve heard the songs described as “soundscapes.” Okay, then they could at least make these “soundscapes” interesting for their temporary inhabitants.